Novel explores aftermath of multiple suicides in a family

Miriam Toews’s humour is overwhelmed by the weight of grief.

All My Puny Sorrows is a nuanced, shattering exploration into the aftermath of multiple suicides in the same family. It burrows deep, and those expecting Toews’s usual balance of funny and sad may be disappointed. The wry humour is here, but it is largely overshadowed by the weight of grief. This feels right and appropriate, however, and what it lacks in funny, it makes up for in insight.

The young Mennonite women of Toews’s previous novels have aged. In A Complicated Kindness and Irma Voth her protagonists were teenagers; here sisters Elfrieda and Yolandi are in their 40s, and life has taken a toll.

On the surface, Elfrieda, known as Elf, has everything: She’s a world-renowned concert pianist, adored by her husband, loved by her family. Yolandi, known as Yoli, on the other hand, is a bit of a train wreck. She’s divorced, broke and trying to raise two teenagers. Both have left behind — at least physically — the stiflingly conservative Mennonite community in which they were raised, but Toews seems to be saying that no matter how far you travel, you bring your emotional demons with you.

Elf wants to die. She has a long history of suicide attempts involving pills and knives and bleach that leave her in the psychiatric ward for months. Yoli wants her sister to live, and to want to live, but also knows it’s a futile desire. How does one live with such knowledge? How does one come to terms with the inevitable, willing self-murder of a loved one?

This is the agonizing territory of All My Puny Sorrows. At times it’s hard to remember it’s a novel, and not a memoir as, like Yoli, Toews’s sister and father both committed suicide. Suicide touches many people but multiple suicides in the family is rarer. Still, it’s not as rare as one might think, which I know firsthand, as both my half-brothers committed suicide. Those of us who have survived such loss sometimes feel marked, set apart, as though our genetic flaws are somehow exposed. Toews’s sister killed herself almost 12 years to the day from when her father did. My youngest brother killed himself nearly 12 years to the day after my other brother did — the first on Easter Sunday, the second on Good Friday. It’s impossible to make this stuff up. Impossible for a writer not to turn to the page to try to make sense of it.

While each unhappy family is, as Tolstoy said, unhappy in its own way, the terrain of guilt, frustration, anger, despair and fear looks similar no matter where you stand and Toews has done a fine job of exploring that landscape.

She also does an excellent job revealing the ambivalence of survivors, the conflicted emotions, the shell-shock and weariness of loving someone who wants to die, as well as the resentment felt toward psychiatric institutions who often treat mental patients as recalcitrant children. A scene in which the psychiatrist — who’s largely absent — finally appears but then refuses to see Elf because she won’t talk and won’t take her medication is particularly well done. The doctor informs Yoli he “doesn’t have time for a silly game” and then walks away from her. Yoli’s subsequent rage at the shrink spits off the page and will be familiar to anyone who’s lived through it.

The imagery of the novel is particularly fine. It opens with the family watching the house the father built with his own hands being hauled away on the back of a truck, never to be seen again. It’s hard to conceive of a more poignant beginning than this image of the father, who makes a visor of his hand to block the sun’s glare as he stares at the place his home used to be. Writes Toews: “Elfrieda and my mother and I got into our car and waited for my father to join us. He stood looking at emptiness for what seemed like an eternity.”

The novel has some flaws. Toews’s habit of summarizing dialogue rather than simply having the characters speak for themselves can be distancing, and the vast number of literary and pop cultural references feels forced. Names and titles are dropped into conversation like sprinkles on icing: Baryshnikov, The Wire, Joe Strummer, Richard Holmes, Degrassi High, Ezra Pound, Philip Larking, Iggy Pop, Thomas Bernhard, Dan Brown, The Weepies, Marc Jacobs ... to list just a few. It feels too clunky and I fear it will date the novel unnecessarily. There are several long letters, which drag the pacing a bit, and some history about Russian pogroms against Mennonites which isn’t fully developed.

That being said, this is a book well worth reading, brave and perceptive. Toews set herself a heartbreakingly difficult task, and she should be proud of what she’s accomplished.

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